The 2006-07 salary cap will be set at $53.135 million, an increase of $3.6 million from last season.

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So how does that affect the Pistons? More than you might think. Now, I may not be the best person in regard to analyzing the cap, and I definitely defer to the PistonsForum resident expert The Microwave here, but a cursory look at the numbers shows something interesting.

Using Microwave's own salary cap examination I added up the Pistons team salary, excluding the salaries of Maurice Evans, who was traded, and Tony Delk, who opted out of his contract. Then I assumed Microwave's qualifying offer of $839,209 to Alex Acker.

That gives me a total of $48,050,878 in total salaries. Now, the Pistons also reached a verbal agreement with Lindsay Hunter and Nazr Mohammad. It was assumed that Nazr was going to get the entire MLE from the Pistons at 5 years and $30 dollars with a starting salary of $5 million. However, if we add that $5 million to our actual salary cap number we get $53,050,878 or approximately $84,122 under the salary cap.

That means we are able to sign Nazr without touching the MLE and the two year $4.5 million deal verbally agreed to with Lindsay Hunter can be reached using less than half of the Pistons MLE. Assuming that the deal is a $2 million and $2.5 million deal then that would mean the Pistons have $3 of their MLE to spend on another free agent plus their bi-annual exemption of $1.75 million.

I would like someone more versed in the salary cap to tell me if I am off base or if this is something that could be legitimate.

If the cap is $53, and the Pistons are at $48, you add on the MLE and Bi-Annual exceptions ($5.3-ish and $1.747) to the $48 to determine cap position.

The exceptions are only for teams OVER the cap before FA starts. This closes a loophole that allowed teams to spend their cap space, and then spend exceptions.

Basically, the Pistons can only re-sign their own guys (no exception needed for Hunter), use the MLE and BAE and lastly, sign guys to minimum contracts.

The difference in the assumed cap # and announced cap # doesn't change the Pistons' ability to spend. What it helps is that the luxury tax limit is higher which means the Pistons can take on a little more salary.

Btw, Mo Evans and Ronald Dupree's trade exceptions count against the cap. They aren't gone from the books until they either expire, or the Pistons use the exception in trade which would make the previous deal complete. Now those exceptions don't cost anything, except cap space and maybe luxury tax if we go over the limit (not sure).